9780241663547

DAVID COPPERFIELD

CHARLES DICKENS

‘If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.’

‘Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat at down in the garden-path.

‘I am David Copper eld, of Blunderstone, in Su olk –where you came, on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not t for me. It made me run away to you. I have walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’

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First published in 1850

This abridgement first published in Penguin Books 2001

Published in Puffin Classics 2012

This clothbound edition published 2024

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Abridgement text copyright © Penguin Books, 2001, 2012

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isbn : 978–0–241–66354–7

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To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night at Blunderstone, in Su olk. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it.

An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, was the principal magnate of our family – Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when she su ciently overcame her dread of this formidable personage to mention her at all.

My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was mortally a ronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother, whom she had never seen, was not yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. is was the state of matters on the a ernoon of, what I may be excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday.

My mother was sitting by the re, but poorly in health

and very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, when, li ing her eyes as she dried them to the window opposite, she saw a strange lady coming up the garden.

My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was Miss Betsey. She went and opened the door.

‘Mrs David Copper eld, I think,’ said Miss Betsey.

‘Yes.’

‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I dare say?’

My mother answered she had had that pleasure.

‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother begged her to walk in.

ey went into the parlour my mother had come from, the re in the best room on the other side of the passage not being lighted. When they were both seated, Miss Betsey said:

‘Well, and when do you expect . . .?’

‘I am all in a tremble,’ faltered my mother. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter.’

‘Have some tea,’ said Miss Betsey.

‘Oh dear me, do you think it will do me any good?’ cried my mother.

‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy. What do you call your girl?’

‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my mother innocently.

‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously

quoting the second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs. ‘I don’t mean that. I mean your servantgirl.’

‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.

‘Here! Peggotty!’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour door. ‘Tea. Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t dawdle.’

Having issued this mandate, Miss Betsey shut the door again, and sat down as before, with her feet on the fender.

‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I have no doubt it will be a girl. Now, child, from the moment of the birth of this girl . . .’

‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.

‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’ returned Miss Betsey. ‘From the moment of this girl’s birth, child, I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copper eld.’

When, later that same day, my mother was delivered of a boy, my aunt walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented fairy. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey Trotwood Copper eld was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows.

Therst objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all.

What else do I remember? Let me see. ere comes out of the cloud, our house. On the ground- oor is Peggotty’s kitchen, opening into a back yard. Here is a long passage – what an enormous perspective I make of it! – leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door.

Here is our pew in the church. With a window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and is seen many times during the morning’s service.

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air.

Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour re, alone, when the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door, and there was my mother, looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with beautiful black hair

and whiskers, who had walked home with us from church last Sunday.

As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow than a monarch – or something like that – and patted me on the head, but somehow I didn’t like him, or his deep voice, and I put his hand away.

Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the gentleman again, or whether there was any greater lapse of time before he re-appeared, I cannot recall. But there he was, in church, and he walked home with us a erwards.

Gradually, I became used to seeing the gentleman with the black whiskers. I liked him no better than at rst – Mr Murdstone – I knew him by that name now.

We were sitting one evening (when my mother was out), when Peggotty, a er looking at me several times, said:

‘Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? ere’s the sea; and the boats; and the shermen; and the beach; and Am to play with –’

Peggotty meant her nephew Ham.

I was ushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?

‘Why then, I’ll as good as bet a guinea,’ said Peggotty, ‘that she’ll let us go. I’ll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever she comes home.’

Without being nearly so much surprised as I had expected, my mother entered into it readily.

e day soon came for our going. We were to go in a carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning a er breakfast.

When we saw Yarmouth and the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that for her part Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the nest place in the universe.

‘And here’s my Am!’ she screamed, ‘growed out of knowledge!’

He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. Our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry me home. We went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders’ yards, smiths’ forges, and a great litter of such places, until Ham said:

‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!’

I looked in all directions, but no house could I make out. ere was a black barge, not far o , high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily.

‘ at’s not it?’ said I. ‘ at ship-looking thing?’

‘ at’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ returned Ham.

If it had been Aladdin’s palace, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it.

It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. ere was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a parasol. Some lockers and boxes served for seats and eked out the chairs.

All this I saw in the rst glance a er I crossed the threshold, and then Peggotty opened a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most desirable bedroom ever seen – in the stern of the vessel, with a little window, where the rudder used to go through. e walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its brightness.

We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, and a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so) called little Em’ly. By and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous manner o boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As he called Peggotty ‘Lass’, and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no doubt that he was her brother.

‘Glad to see you, sir,’ said Mr Peggotty. ‘You’ll nd us rough, sir, but you’ll nd us ready.’

I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a delightful place.

A er tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug, it seemed to me the most delicious retreat that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate at outside, and to look at the re, and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em’ly was sitting by my side; the lady with the white apron was knitting on the opposite side of the re. Peggotty was at her needle-work; Ham was trying to recollect a scheme of telling fortunes with cards; Mr Peggotty was smoking his pipe.

Later that night, in the privacy of my own little cabin, Peggotty informed me that Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom my host had at di erent times adopted in their childhood, when they were le destitute; and that the lady in the white apron was Mrs Gummidge, the widow of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor.

Of course, I was in love with little Em’ly.

We used to walk about Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. e days sported by us. I told Em’ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me, I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she did, and I have no doubt she did. We were the admiration of Mrs Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little locker, side by side.

I soon found out that Mrs Gummidge did not always

make herself so agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances of her residence with Mr Peggotty.

Mr Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called e Willing Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third evening of our visit.

Mrs Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears in the forenoon, when the re smoked.

‘I am a lone lorn creetur’,’ were Mrs Gummidge’s words, ‘and everythink goes contrairy with me.’

‘Oh, it’ll soon leave o ,’ said Peggotty, ‘and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than to us.’

‘I feel it more,’ said Mrs Gummidge.

Mrs Gummidge’s peculiar corner of the reside seemed to me to be the warmest and snuggest in the place, but she was constantly complaining of the cold. At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again that she was ‘a lone lorn creetur’ and everythink went contrairy with her’.

‘It is certainly very cold,’ said Peggotty. ‘Everybody must feel it so.’

‘I feel it more than other people,’ said Mrs Gummidge. Accordingly, when Mr Peggotty came home about nine o’clock, this unfortunate Mrs Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition.

‘What’s amiss?’ said Mr Peggotty, with a clap of his hands.

Mrs Gummidge took out an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

‘You’ve come from e Willing Mind, Dan’l?’

‘Why yes, I’ve took a short spell at e Willing Mind tonight.’

‘I’m sorry I should drive you there,’ said Mrs Gummidge.

‘Drive! I don’t want no driving,’ returned Mr Peggotty. ‘I only go too ready.’

‘Very ready,’ said Mrs Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes. ‘I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re so ready.’

‘Along o’you! It an’t along o’you!’

‘Yes, yes, it is,’ cried Mrs Gummidge. ‘I know what I am. I know that I am a lone lorn creetur’, and not only that everythink goes contrairy with me, but that I go contrairy with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun’.’

Mrs Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed.

When she was gone, Mr Peggotty looked round upon us, and said:

‘She’s been thinking of the old ’un!’

And whenever Mrs Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the tenderest commiseration.

So the fortnight slipped away, and at last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation from Mr

Peggotty and Mrs Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving little Em’ly was piercing.

Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had thought little or nothing about my home, but the nearer we drew, the more excited I was to get there, and to run into my mother’s arms.

e door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange servant.

‘Why, Peggotty!’ I said, ruefully, ‘isn’t she come home?’

‘Yes, yes, Master Davy,’ said Peggotty. ‘She’s come home.’

She took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the kitchen; and shut the door.

‘Peggotty!’ said I, quite frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!’ she answered, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand. ‘What do you think? You’ve got a pa! A new one.’

‘A new one?’ I repeated.

Peggotty put out her hand. ‘Come and see him.’

‘I don’t want to see him.’

– ‘And your mama,’ said Peggotty.

I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour, where she le me.

On one side of the re, sat my mother; on the other, Mr Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly, I thought.

‘Now, Clara, my dear,’ said Mr Murdstone. ‘Recollect! control yourself. Davy boy, how do you do?’

I gave him my hand. A er a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him, I turned to the window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their heads in the cold.

As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs.

Nextevening we dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my mother – I am afraid I liked him none the better for that – and she was very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that evening.

A er dinner, when we were sitting by the re, a coach drove up to the garden-gate, and he went out to receive the visitor.

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomylooking lady she was; dark, like her brother, and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose.

She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. en she looked at me, and said:

‘Is that your boy, sister-in-law?’

My mother acknowledged me.

‘Generally speaking,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I don’t like boys.’

As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again.

On the very rst morning a er her arrival she was up at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:

‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty and thoughtless’ – my mother blushed but laughed – ‘to have any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you’ll be so good as give me your keys, my dear, I’ll attend to all this sort of thing in the future.’

From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys.

My mother did not su er her authority to pass from her without a shadow of protest. One night, when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signi ed his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry.

‘It’s very hard,’ she said, ‘that in my own house . . .’

‘My own house?’ repeated Mr Murdstone. ‘Clara!’

‘Our own house, I mean,’ faltered my mother, evidently frightened. ‘It’s very hard that in your own house, I may not have a word to say about domestic matters. I am sure I managed very well before we were married.’

‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end of this. I go to-morrow.’

‘Jane Murdstone,’ thundered Mr Murdstone. ‘Will you be silent? How dare you? Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying an artless person, and forming her character. But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets with a base return . . .’

‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’ cried my mother, ‘don’t accuse me of being ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. I have a great many defects, I know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving . . .’

My mother was too much overcome to go on. ere had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-school. Nothing, however, was concluded on the subject yet. In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home.

Shall I ever forget those lessons! ey were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by Mr Murdstone and his sister, who were always present. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery of misery.

As to any recreation with other children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology of the Murd-

stones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers and held that they contaminated one another. e natural result of this treatment – continued, I suppose, for some six months or more – was to make me sullen and dull. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupe ed but for one circumstance.

My father had le a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room came out a glorious host, to keep me company. ey kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time.

One morning, when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking rm, and Mr Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane – a lithe and limber cane, which he le o binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.

‘I tell you, Clara,’ said Mr Murdstone, ‘I have o en been ogged myself.’

‘To be sure; of course,’ said Miss Murdstone.

I felt apprehensive and sought Mr Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.

‘Now, David,’ he said, ‘you must be far more careful today than usual.’

He gave the cane another switch; and laid it down beside him. I felt the words of my lessons slipping o . We began badly, and went on worse. Book a er book was added to the heap of failures. At last he rose and took up the cane.

‘We can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect rmness, the worry and torment that David has occasioned her today. David, you and I will go upstairs, boy.’

As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss Murdstone said:

‘Clara! are you a perfect fool?’

I saw my mother stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.

He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely – I am certain he had a delight in the formal parade of executing justice – and when we got there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm.

‘Mr Murdstone! Sir!’ I cried to him. ‘Don’t! Pray don’t beat me! I have tried to learn, sir, but I can’t while you and Miss Murdstone are by. I can’t indeed!’

‘Can’t you, indeed, David?’ he said. ‘We’ll try that.’

And he cut me heavily. In the same instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through.

He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above all the noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out – I heard my mother crying out – and Peggotty. en he was gone; and the door was locked

outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the oor.

My imprisonment lasted ve days. e length of those ve days occupy the place of years in my remembrance.

On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own name spoken in a whisper. I groped my way to the door and put my lips to the keyhole.

‘Is that you, Peggotty dear?’

‘Yes, my own precious Davy. Be as so as a mouse.’

‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you know?’

‘School. Near London,’ was Peggotty’s answer.

In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared and told me that when I was dressed, I was to come downstairs into the parlour, and have my breakfast. ere I found my mother, very pale and with red eyes, into whose arms I ran.

‘Oh, Davy!’ she said. ‘ at you could hurt anyone I love! I am so grieved, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.’

ey had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more sorry for that than for my going away.

I tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-and-butter, and trickled into my tea.

‘Master Copper eld’s box there!’ said Miss Murdstone, when wheels were heard at the gate.

I looked for Peggotty, but neither she nor Mr Murdstone appeared.

‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note.

‘Ready, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother. ‘I forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!’

‘Clara!’ repeated Miss Murdstone.

en I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked o with it.

We might have gone about half a mile, and my pockethandkerchief was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short.

Looking out to ascertain for what, I saw, to my amazement, Peggotty burst from a hedge and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me to her stays. She brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, but not one word did she say. A er another and a nal squeeze with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran away.

I had now leisure to examine the purse. It had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s hand, ‘For Davy. With my love.’

A er we had jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.